


Burning for You

by Writerwithagoal



Series: Klaroline AU Week 2019 Drabbles [1]
Category: The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Klaroline AU week 2019, caroline is a phenix., don't hate, greek mythos adopted, klaus in enraptured by the power she holds, she thinks he's hot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 06:16:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20943683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writerwithagoal/pseuds/Writerwithagoal
Summary: "When your father is the god of the sun, you tend to burn bright."Klaus needs something that can cure Rebekah, and all signs point to the Auroral Phenix as the only creature strong enough to help. Will this mysterious creature help a cursed being like Klaus Mikaelson?





	Burning for You

**Author's Note:**

> First piece for Klaroline AU Week 2019!!!!!  
I have midterms this week, and am writing around studying so I might not make every day but I'm going to try. I hope you enjoy my Phenix!Caroline piece.

Growing up when giants walked the earth Caroline often felt older than she truly was. That being said being reborn often made her feel exactly her age. Stranding slowly, her head fuzzy with the details, she glanced around her store and groaned. The scorched tile and ashes of where her store had been made sense. Feeling her chest, she felt the healing wound on her chest. Bullet wound, wood by the fact she’d rebirthed so quickly. Humans had the most entertaining toys to play with, holding out her hand she absorbed the residual flames and heat back into her body. If anyone had been around to notice it, they would have seen the briefest glimpse of fiery wings rising behind the naked blonde.

Taking a deep breath, she started moving through the rubble of her jewelry store for anything of value to take with her. Since she’d most likely be considered dead from a mysterious fire, it was time to leave Mystic Falls. After recovering a hundred pieces of gold and silver gemstone encrusted pieces, she took a deep breath and in a swirl of blue fire disappeared from the rubble, just as sirens started to pour in.

Unbeknownst to Caroline someone had been watching her stumble through her former store. Someone who had been looking for the being that couldn’t be killed by a weapon of man nor flame of the gods. A man who was bent on controlling or killing the powerful beings in creation. Someone who believed himself to be the most powerful creature to walk the earth. Klaus Mikaelson stalked from the shadows across the Mystic Falls square his suspicion confirmed.

People had murmured his entire immortal life of the powers of rejuvenation and destruction a Phenix controlled. A nice bedtime story for those who needed a miracle or a plea of vengeance. Then the alters had started popping up, about six hundred years ago or so. Whispers saying that if one left a vibrant gemstone, or something of equal beauty the Auroral Phenix would answer their prayer. Klaus had dismissed it as the blithering tales of human’s hell bent on praying for anyone to save them or protect them.

Then his minions had started pouring in stories of villages being burned down the day after an opal or precious stone had been left at one of these alters in the woods. Soon more stories came in of the sick miraculously healing. Abusers of women and children, catching fire spontaneously while walking through the town after a doll from a little girl or toy cart from a little boy had been left with pleas for help. Yet no one saw anything but a burst pretty petite blonde near the location of every occurrence. Soon his interest was piqued, Rebekah and Elijah had amused his curiosity to an extent.

Caroline reappeared five thousand miles away in her villa ruins of Despotiko. While she could have reappeared anywhere, her family home was were her body always pulled following a rebirth, over the last two thousand years she’d given up on resisting the pull. Despotiko was protected and a national archaeological site for the Greeks. Whether or not they’d ever actually owned it or not was of little matter at this point, the ancient history of man and nymphs lost to time. Once islands across the Mediterranean had been known to be sanctuaries for the children of the gods. Walking through the broken pillars to where she could look out over the bay, she closed her eyes.

Lots of mythos surrounded her people but, in the end, she was the last one left. Shapeshifting hadn’t protected them as much as Helios and Hephaestus had hoped. Man was a cruel race willing to destroy anything it didn’t feel it could control or conquer adequately. Rolling her shoulders, she walked over to her mother’s chest, that she had here masked by magic and careful misdirection. There were sentimental things, like her mother’s molting plumage which never faded, an aquamarine pendent in the shape of a tear, as well as practical things like clothes and weapons. Grabbing her gear, she got dressed quickly. Placing the gems and jewelry she’d recovered from the remnants of Rising Jewelers ashes into the box she placed her hands on the chest and said a prayer to her father to protect her from whatever was chasing her.

She like her mother, was child of an air nymph and the sun god Helios. Nymphs who bore a Phenix didn’t survive the birth, so most Phenix’s lived with an older member of the flock until maturity which was between six hundred and eight hundred years old. While they rarely stayed in human forms, their avian forms in the end had been their undoing.

As humans had realized that they were demi-gods or the grandchildren of a titan and a being of Gia, the desire to control grew. Phenix’s could neither be controlled or tamed, they also couldn’t be recreated through interbreeding. Then the age of iron had come, and with-it man’s weapons grew stronger. Unbeknownst to her flock or her father, to prevent them from growing too strong, Zeus had cursed his cousin’s children to be burned by the touch of iron. As such they could only be killed by iron through the heart or brain.

While man had destroyed her culture 1200 years ago, her god father had spirited her away from the blood bath and placed her with cousin Hephaestus in the volcanic chasms underground until she’d reached maturity of six hundred years old. Carolina as she’d been known then had trained as a jewel smith under her god cousin, who was amazed at her ability to focus and her attention to details.

The old gods slumbered now though, their worshipers far and in-between, not enough to keep them awake. Caroline drifted through the world of man taking time to help innocents here and there. Caroline missed her flock often especially after a traumatic rebirth, but life moved on and with time so did she. Man was impressionable though and with a few well-placed whispers and alters popping up on every continent she thrived.

She pulled a replacement phone from the chest and plugged in the password to unlock it. Walking around the ruins of her old life, she ran a security check on her various properties across the globe. Everything was fine except her store front in New Orleans. Rolling her eyes, she zoomed in on who was sitting on her counter. Niklaus Mikaelson. He had been sniffing after her tail feathers for six centuries. Still her deal with Kol Mikaelson not to engage with his older brother was the reason; why his overzealous murder happy brother wasn’t a crispy critter her to consume.

Growling low in her throat, she felt the fire rise within her. Taking multiple deep breaths didn’t keep her phantom flame wings from unfurling behind her, scorching the points of her shirt where her real wings would have come out of her back. Spinning on her heel she walked back to the chest and grabbed her favorite leather jacket. If Klaus Mikaelson wanted to fuck with her, he was about to find out that getting too close to an open flame got you eaten by the last daughter of the sun.

Klaus was hoping that his minion wasn’t wrong otherwise he was sitting in gorgeous jewelry store that had been closed for five years. In fact, the store according to his minion had closed the day after he and his siblings had returned home. Klaus looked around the store from his spot on the counter impressed with the amount of gold and gems left just sitting on display. Was this woman really so powerful that she felt comfortable leaving such expensive things behind in her absence.

“You know getting ass sweat off of glass is a lot harder than people assume,” a crystal voice startled him out of his thoughts, “get off the furniture hybrid.”

Spinning he looked for the source of the voice, standing behind him was the slight blonde beauty who’d burned and the reformed in the rubble of a small-town jewelry store four nights previous. “So, you aren’t a myth?”

“No very much real now if you want to continue to terrorize your section of the supernatural realm, I suggest you leave now,” the blonde replied, barely looking at him. In fact, it looked almost like she was bored. Snarling he flashed forward only to meet heat and smoke. Turning on his heel he froze as he felt a burning pain on his back. “I told you to leave Mikaelson.”

“I’ve been looking for you,” he breathed through the pain trying to ignore the searing pain that burst forth from her hand on his back.

“You have hmmm, I don’t remember you calling me up or sending me a message on twitter,” she pushed more heat through her hand feeling the flesh start to burn under her hand, the shirt long gone.

“I didn’t think you’d take me call.” he wheezed flashing away finally giving up all pretense that it didn’t hurt to feel her touch.

“Oh, but breaking into one of my stores seemed much smarter,” Caroline was growing impatient. The predator in her wanted to eat him in one gulp, people forgot that some birds weren’t herbivores. She felt the fire from her hand itch to come out and play.

“I wanted to know if the stories were true, if you were the Auroral Phenix incarnate,” he said, shifting his shirt off to look at the scorch marks her hand had left. Only the marking looked more claw than fingered.

“So why not just ask, one apex predator to another?” she asked, looking around her store, and Klaus paused.

Up close he was amazed there weren’t more stories of how beautiful this blonde woman was. Eyes that made him feel he was staring into the deepest pools of water, and hair that could only be described as spun gold. “I never heard tale of a Phenix’s kill, or destruction until you started burning whole villages down as you pleased.”

“It’s not my fault man built their homes out of such flammable material, if they couldn’t handle a little heat then they shouldn’t beat their wives or children,” Caroline stated, as though the thought of not burning down a tinder box of a wooden home hadn’t occurred to her. She was working ridiculously hard at focusing on his ches-no eyes. God why did immortality tend to happen to the only physically gifted individuals of the world.

“So you only ever burned down villages of people who deserved it?” Klaus asked, stepping closer.

“Sometimes a rebirth went wrong, or my heart too heavy to contain my flame,” Caroline sighed, she was growing bored.

“It’s true though, all the stories about your kind though?” he asked, pushing closer when she made no move to stop him.

“Depends on what you’ve heard, though I doubt any of it was actually correct.”

“You don’t cry healing tears, nor journey to the ends of the world to die and be reborn?”

“Maybe yes, but maybe no,” Caroline answered, moving around her store looking to check if he’d stolen anything, always keeping one eye on the man in her store.

“Don’t play games girl,” he growled.

“Girl, that’s rich, I was in my first thousand years when your people hadn’t yet learned how to make swords.” Caroline spun on him so quick he felt off kilter. In a thousand years he’d never met anything or one who made him feel weak. Her hair glowing an almost auburn kind of gold, the color of molten metal. “Either tell me what the great Hybrid wants with me or be gone!”

“Madam,” he cleared his throat. “I merely thought that us powerful creatures should get to know one another better.”

“Bullshit, those words might work with the witches, and fae queens you’re used to dealing with, but my magic is older than the magic of man and far less forgiving Niklaus Mikaelson,” Caroline felt her body aching to change and devour the abomination before her. Stealing the monster inside herself she remembered the teachings of her mother and her people.

“It’s actually my sister Rebekah, she’s been poisoned by something and withers away day by day, I was looking for you because Kol told us that only you could save her,” he relented, stepping back.

“You came to ask a favor, or did you think you could force my hand Niklaus Mikaelson?” she said, eyebrow arched as flame wings glinted behind her reflecting off the gold and silver pieces hanging around the store.

Klaus was at a loss for words, if this was her half transformed, with wings of flame, it belied a beautiful creature in her natural form. He could see shades of reds, blues, and yellows, rippling over her hair and through the flames behind her. “I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.”

“Bring me the thing you value most and I’ll give you the gift to save your sister,” she said, stalking forward and holding her hand out to him. Taking it, he hissed as the heat seared his palm. Pulling away he saw a scar on his palm in the shape of swirling smoke.

When he looked up, he was alone on the roof top of One Shell Square, alone. Spinning around he saw a faint sparkle of something flying off into the night sky a thousand yards away from him. Growling he flashed home to see how Rebekah was faring in his absence.

Two days passed and Klaus had not come back to her shop. She was calmer now, the heat of the rebirth finally worn off. Sighing she turned back to her styling and sculpting of the vial that she would use to hold her tears. A phenix’s tears gained their healing ability from the lost souls that they cried for. Crying allowed them to protect and preserve themselves and their flock outside of rebirth. Even if Klaus didn’t come back, she would leave the vial on Rebekah’s bedside. She need only drink the tears and all curses, maladies, and pain would leave her body.

Standing she walked to the garden outside her workroom, she knelt down and placed the vial at the center of the sundial design in the tile. Finally, she allowed herself to shift into her natural form. Deep red and yellow plumage spilled out as her bones thinned and shifted to become her real self. Shaking out her tail feathers, she let out a low mournful call, which startled every bird within a half mile out of their nests and into the sky.

Crying drops the color of molten gold, she angled her head so as the tears dripped down her face, they rolled off her beak and filled the vial below. She cried for all the women lost to anger, the children dead in the name of greed, and the loss of her family a millennium twice past. When the vial was full, and her heart felt as light as her bones she shook out her plumage and looked up into the sun which was highest in the sky.

“_Thank you, father_,” she silently prayed.

“Caroline?” he was here, curious she turned her head 180 degrees to look at him. Standing in the doorway of her work room was the hybrid empty handed. Cooing she looked at him eyes wide. Shifting back into her sun-dressed human form she shook off the few feathers that clung through the transformation. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like a fairy princess transforming in a gust of wind and flame?”

“I tend to eat most beings who see me transform, so no,” Caroline said softly, looking up at him as she knelt to stopper the vial. “I believe the deal was what you value most, in exchange for your sisters cure.”

“I thought about this for two whole days Nix, and I couldn’t come up with anything,” he said slowly, “my sister actually figured it out first, you want me to give myself to you in exchange for her.”

“I wanted the offer, but I’ve never left a woman to suffer,” Caroline laughed, and tossed the vial to him.

“Dinner on the gulf?” he offered, snatching it deftly out of the air.

“Our pact is fulfilled,” she answered, walking over and leaning up to kiss his cheek lightly. “Don’t be late.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and Comments cause me to write sequals.   
Nonbetaed cause I'm squeezing this in under the limit. I hope you all enjoy.


End file.
